


The Committee For Making Dave's Life Suck

by Lousy



Category: John Dies at the End - David Wong
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Wrestling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24999994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lousy/pseuds/Lousy
Summary: Dave wakes up drunk, alone, and drunk. All he knows is the shadow people took something important and he's ready to go apeshit.Takes place after WtHDIJR. Rated for language.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Kidz Bop Dies at the End

There weren’t a lot of stars out, Dave thought, vomit inducingly before vomiting what must have been an entire case of beer into the mud. The trembled on hands and knees before keeling over and laying out like a starfish. Mud squelched welcomingly as he sunk up to his ears. Dave could still hear though, and aside from his ragged breathing and the sound of crickets, the surroundings were silent. The sky was dark and impassive.

He reached back in his memories for a hint at why he was here, but the most recent thing Dave could remember was walking into the bathroom with a handful of icecubes he’d popped out of the tray and then—

Dave jerked upright, the mud squelching sadly. A shadow person. Its ember eyes scorching his soul. A rage boiled in his stomach unrealistically quickly for the size of his stomach, but fuck realism, Dave was _mad_. The shadow person had done something, taken away something important and he was here for vengeance. They had gone too far this time.

He fought the bile that burned as it crept up his throat and drove a fist into the mud. Dave pushed up and swayed to his feet, nearly toppling over as he straightened. As he stood with his head hanging, acclimating to the swirling static in his mind, Dave spotted three items in the mud. The first was one of those huge cans of beer you usually see wrapped in a paper bag and in the hand of a bridge bum. Based on how he was feeling it wasn’t the first of the night. Dave also saw his phone, which he leaned down to pick up. Worry nudged at Dave’s dulled senses but when he dropped it three times while wiping mud off he was reminded that the phone was a Frankenstein Nokia monster that at this rate was likely to live longer than himself. The screen was streaked with mud and this combined with swirling vision kept David from reading the messages lighting the screen. He stuffed it into his back pocket and tried to make sense of the last item without bending down again. It almost looked like… a hymnal? Actually it didn’t, it just looked like a rectangle, but something in his addled memories was telling him it was a rectangle-shaped hymnal. Dave kicked at it weakly. When it took the kick without transforming into a bullshit, music-themed creature from beyond this world he immediately forgot about it.

As a pilot light of anger flickered inside him, Dave straightened up and squished in a circle to get a look at the surroundings. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness but it was evident he was in a field, on one end of which it looked like someone had erected the outline of a church, or, more likely, an actual church. There was a line of buildings on the other end and a street beyond them. He started towards it.

In Dave’s trek across the field, he was disappointed in himself to see he’d seemingly found the only patch of mud in the entire field to pass out in. There were what looked like acres (Dave thought, he wasn’t entirely sure what an acre of land looked like) of swaying grass he must have stomped through looking for the absolute worst and smelliest place to lie down in. Unless that had been the shadow men fucking with him again. Assholes.

His stumbling took on a stompy quality as he approached the line of buildings, only one of which had its lights on. Orange leaked out of a cracked back door followed by air thick enough to condense on glass and an unusual amount of screaming. Dave slowed. No part of waking up alone in a field and finding the only live building in sight to be one filled with screams was telling Dave he should go inside, but part of finding a building filled with screams was telling Dave he was likely to find shadow people or at least shadow-people-related activity upon which he could enact his justice.

He grabbed the doorknob and ripped his arm back to fling it open. And then grabbed it more carefully this time so there was no chance of misjudging its location again. It could be anything past that door, a writhing mass of babies fused together, a dimension of plants with a universal foot fetish and only Dave’s humble feet to satisfy them all, or literally anything else— if the shadow people were one thing they were sadistic. But if they were another, it was creative. As he wrenched the door open, Dave put up his fists in a way he hoped was threatening to whatever creatures of chaos and death were beyond it.

A 20-something glanced over at his entrance. However, a crazed mud man couldn’t hold her attention long in the contest between what roughly 400 other 20-somethings packed into the McDonald’s sized room were cheering and shouting at. People were pressed back to front and side to side and generating a stench of beer and B.O. to rival a trading card convention. To make more room, several rough looking risers had been erected on the sides, all pointing to the front where a boxing ring containing two men (?) was lofted from the floor. To the left of the platform was a table seating three people watching the ring and occasionally barking something into a microphone that went unheard over the chaos. Behind and around the ring were occult signs— sigils, clocks running backward, skeletons wrapped in string lights, and a prominently placed arch decorated with bones.

Dave had hesitated to call the beings in the ring men, and every additional second he spent gawking made him glad he hadn’t caged himself in by such a narrow descriptor. One had the body of a middle-aged paper pusher wondering where his life had gone, the clothing of a middle-school swimmer wondering where he could find a bigger swimsuit, and the head of a horse wondering how frightening it would have to look to make a person die on sight. The other being looked like an Italian chef, but, like, super ripped. The two were locked in brutal, unrestrained combat, their fight to the death being a source of glee for the audience. It had been their shrieks of joy Dave had heard through the door, not screams of terror.

When the fight ended, the screaming and chanting picked up to earsplitting levels. The horse strolled around the edge of the ring, occasionally leaping onto a corner and throwing his fists in the air to the delight of the crowd. Behind him lay the body of his victim.

There was no question about it, there was something fucky going on here and the shadow people were a part of it. Someone ‘excuse me’d’ their way past Dave, knocking a chip of mud of his ass as they did. Yes, he would make them pay for what they had taken. He would bring this place to the ground no matter what it took.

“Lllllllladies, gentlemen, and friends beyond the binary!” The fighters had disappeared through the arch, being replaced in the ring by a woman from the table, this one lacking any skin or muscle on her face. The crowd quieted to a hum. Skull face leaned against the front bungees of the ring, lowering her mouth a paper’s width from the microphone. She spoke low and impossibly gravely for someone without jaw muscles.

“Are you ready. For. Some. PARTY. WORLD. VVVVVVVVIOLENCE!”

The crowd was going ballistic, but when the speaker straightened her arms in front of her, hands coming together to form a triangle, the volume impossibly kicked up ten notches.

“HAIL MOTHER WORM!”

The crowd chanted it back, thrusting their own triangles to the ceiling.

“HAAAAIIIILLLL MOTHER WORM!”

Dave could sense the waves of occult energy surging through this place with every ‘hail mother worm,’ occult energy that read a lot like air on the verge of the 50% mark for sweat content. The pure sin factor in this building was enough to kill puppies if they got within fifty feet. He had waited around long enough, it was time for vengeance.

Dave formed his arms into a wedge in front of himself, driving it between people to squeeze past, their sweaty bodies rubbing against Dave’s when they wouldn’t or couldn’t step aside. A few steps into the crowd and Dave couldn’t be certain anything existed outside it. A few more steps and he wasn’t sure where he could turn to start _looking_ for that anything else. As he was beginning to resign himself to the reality of life among the sweat swarm, Dave was pushed out the front and into the chin-height platform supporting the wrestling ring, which, before he could carefully weigh the pros and cons of being inside, he was inside.

Skull face, whose face he was now seeing wasn’t actually a skull but rather was painted to look that way, eyed Dave’s mud-caked jeans and hair. “Hey, man.”

“Hey,” said Dave, his voice cracking an impossible number of times over one syllable. Dave licked his lips and looked out at the crowd. He looked back to skull face. “I’m here to stop you.”

“Nah, we’ve got permission from the brewery. If you’re concerned about it go buy a beer to support the place.”

“No, I mean… I mean all this,” he waved vaguely.

“Ah. You wanna stop Party World Violence?”

“…Yes.”

“Cool.” Skull face turned her skull face to the crowd. “Llllllladies, gentlemen, and friends beyond the binary! I asked you before and I’ll ask you again— are you ready for some Party World Violence? I said ARE YOU READY FOR SOME PARTY WORLD VIOLENCE?” She looked prepared to ask again but contained herself seeing people frothing at the mouth with how ready they were for some Party World Violence. “As you know, my only wish in this world is for the fountain of pain to never stop flowing, to forever quench our thirsts and light a flame in our hearts. But as you may not know, THIS MAN,” she stabbed a finger at THAT MAN, “has made it his mission to plug that never-ending fountain!”

A chant of ‘fuck that guy’ started and petered out in the span of a few seconds.

“What’s this? You don’t agree? Could it be that you’re… ready for some Party World Reckoning? Then we need someone to stand up for what we’re all standing up for. It’s time to call upon the only man who could set this straight, a man so dedicated to Party World Justice he turned in his white stripes for, uh, more black ones to bring about pure, vigilante justice as no ref has done before. It’s time. For Árbitro Obscuro!”

As soon as skull face had mentioned stripes another announcer jumped to his feet and scurried through the bone arch. As skull face continued to pump the audience and Dave was considering what would happen if he just pushed her out of the ring, the announcer reappeared and slid into his seat. Seconds later, prog rock boomed through the surrounding speakers and the curtains lining the arch were flung aside as a figure dressed in black swaggered into the ring. As he strutted around the perimeter, it took Dave a bit of impolite gaping to realize the person did in fact have facial features but that the magically slimming powers of black fabric, of which a thin sheet was stretched over his face, was concealing them like it could camouflage a post-burrito paunch.

Árbitro Obscuro. From Dave’s two years of high school Spanish, a referee between the forces of dark and light who had fallen prey to weak will and now worked for Them.

He snatched a microphone from its stand on a corner post. “So! You’ve come to stand in the way of Party World Violence?”

“Yeah.”

Árbitro gestured to something behind Dave. Turning, he spotted another microphone and wiggled it out of its holster, nearly hitting himself in the face when it popped out. He tapped it twice, the resulting whine causing Dave and the audience to cringe.

“Uh, yeah.”

Árbitro was probably smirking. “Hahaha! And what makes you think I’ll let you get away with that?”

“I’m tired of you bastards taking everything from me so while I’m too drunk to think this is a bad idea I’m doing it. Fight me already, one way or another this ends here.”

“All in good time, but first I must know your name. What should I call Mother Worm's meal as I feed it to her?”

In the face of a name like ‘Árbitro Obscuro,’ ‘Dave’ had room for improvement. However, these guys must already know who he was— it was kind of the whole reason he was here. So for that reason and because he was way too blasted to come up with anything clever, he would just go with the name his parents had given him unfortunately without this situation in mind.

“I’m David.”

John would have thought of a better name.

“David! Prepare for your REFerral to be denied!”

Árbitro slammed the microphone into its holster without breaking eye contact. Dave fumbled his mike back into its place. As skull face screamed at the crowd about the fountain of pain, Árbitro approached.

He jabbed a finger in Dave’s face, his thumb drawing a line across his neck. “First of all, nice to meet you. Second of all, how the hell do you walk with balls that big? Like what the fuck, just walking up here for an improvised fight? Mad respect.” Árbitro demonstrated a number of creative ways to flip a person off. “So how this is gonna work is I’m gonna let you lead the fight. Try to keep it to simple stuff and occasionally I’ll grab you and lead you into a different motion, if you just trust me we’ll be okay.” He thrust his hips and chopped his hands in the universal symbol for ‘suck it.’ “After a while I’ll pin you and count it down cuz that’s my thing, we’ll yell at each other, and you go through the arch over there. If you want you can talk to Ramona about joining as a permanent cast member.” Árbitro pumped a fist in front of his crotch and pointed from Dave to the ground. “Sound good?”

“Uh—”

Skull face pushed her way between Árbitro and Dave, still speaking into the microphone. “Woah there guys, save it for the fight!” She hopped over the bungees, returned the microphone to the corner of the ring, and took her seat at the table. She leaned into the microphone on the table. “Ahem. Threetwoone let’s see some viiiiolence!”

Bouncing on his heels like in a character select menu, Árbitro backed into the corner opposite of Dave’s. Dave mimicked his stance and tried not to remember his win ratio although with his brain currently being a synapse slurry it wasn’t hard. One thought that kept floating to the front however was his indifference if he were to die in this fight. A few people would be sad, but they’d get over it.

Árbitro let Dave approach then dodged his punch with more agility than Dave had expected. “Simmer down partner, I need to see them coming better than that.”

Dave threw another punch and, to keep it fresh, kicked at the same time. The punch was another easy dodge, but Árbitro took the kick to the knees and stumbled back like it had come from a horse or a very exposed horse-man.

 _Holy shit_.

Dave ogled the foot that had delivered the miracle kick.

Árbitro shook his head like a dog getting out of the pool and launched himself at Dave. Head low, he grabbed David around the middle and kept going to drive him into the ground. Just as Dave was certain he was about to make an intimate connection with the floor, Árbitro made a mistake in his form and twisted so his shoulder took the impact.

The crowd screamed in exaltation, another ‘fuck him up’ chant picking up steam.

Árbitro was sitting on Dave’s stomach, knees planted into the mat on either side. As he pulled his fist high behind his head, Dave closed his eyes and squirmed, but the ref wouldn’t be moved. A butterfly kissed Dave’s cheek. He cracked an eye open and saw Árbitro shaking out his fist from a punch that had held as much impact as a fart.

 _Holy shit_.

From the ground, Dave drew his fist back awkwardly before landing it on Árbitro’s bicep. The ref clutched at his arm and probably had his eyes shut in anguish, so Dave took the presumed opportunity to buck until Árbitro was thrown off. David began to scramble to his feet, changed his mind, and thudded onto Árbitro’s stomach to reverse their positions from seconds prior. He was preparing a punch when fingers wrapped around his neck. Dave froze and stared down the length of Árbitro’s trembling arms. Again: as much impact as a fart.

With a roar, Dave thrashed his head back and forth, Árbitro slipping out from under him and scooting back after releasing his grip. Dave loomed over him. He could feel the vengeant power coursing through his blood, barely contained by his skin.

“Tell Them to stop fucking with my life! I’m about to go monster Dave here and I’m not gonna be fucking sorry! Not after what you people did.”

Having backed himself into a corner, Árbitro felt behind him for the microphone and pulled it to his face. “I’ll never submit! I stand for the good of Party World Violence, I stand for Mother Worm, I cannot be defeated!”

Dave snatched the mike out of his hand, “Well I stand for _me_!” and cast it behind him. He grabbed the front of Árbitro’s shirt and hauled him up. David scowled as Árbitro smelled his fate, his feet kicking wildly in an attempt to avoid Dave’s power. Finding he couldn’t raise Árbitro above his standing height, Dave made do and backed up several feet while still holding the ref in front of him. 

And rushed the corner of the ring. He smashed the ref into the pole and at his scream, Árbitro’s first scream of the fight, found he couldn’t hold him up. Árbitro curled into himself on the mat. The crowd was booing and Dave felt a plastic cup bounce off his head, moisture splattering his face.

He picked up the microphone discarded to the center of the ring. “Hey shadow fucks! I got your… your… guy! So you need to leave me the hell alone or I’ll go after the rest of you and take your weird shit like you took my, uh, not weird and in fact very important shit. Every time you do you’re just reminding me that my life sucks and I have nothing to lose by going Kamikaze on your asses— so FUCK OFF!”

Dave watched a woman on the front row chug a beer just so she wouldn’t waste any when she chucked the cup at him.

“Don’t pretend like you’re not there, I know you can see me. If you need me to beat up another one of you henchmen I’ll do it, I’ll never give up until I die or you give me back—”

David was going down shuddering and pissing. The impact cracked his teeth together and twisted his head so he could watch the two men towering over him, one holding something that looked similar to a Taser. It was a Taser, Dave realized duly. He tried to push himself up, but a foot on his back made him reconsider. The second man grabbed Dave’s shoes and pulled him through his puddle of piss to the rear edge of the ring.

“Grah,” Dave articulated.

The men ignored him, speaking to each other. “Make sure you test Vic for a concussion, he said this asshole hit his head on a pole.”

Dave struggled to free himself but found he couldn’t. He was slurring his words, “You, you _fucks_. Do you even know who you work for? They _suck_. That’s who They are. They suck just like you.”

The man not pulling him level a disgusted look at Dave, “Shut up fatass,” and reached his Taser arm down.

* * *

“— don’t have feet, I mean I haven’t seen a real one in a while, but in the game at the bowling alley they don’t have feet. They have… they have… fuck, I forget the word, but you know what I mean. So that’s why I decided to check out the street and _oh my shit_ ; have you seen those pimple popping videos because _someone_ in Their department has.”

David groaned and raised a hand to his head.

“Yeah, I guess it’s kind of gross, but more than anything it’s satisfying. It’s like you had somethin’ building up inside you and you get to let it all out— without paying for therapy! Although in this case it’s puss. But as I’m sure Shrek would say in either case, ‘Better out than in.’”

“John, what the fuck,” Dave choked out, using a throat that had been through several wars and was currently vacationing in Death Valley.

John took his eyes off the road for an inappropriate amount of time to look at where Dave was spilling off of the passenger seat of his car. “You know that’s what Shrek would say, don’t play like he wouldn’t.”

“No, I mean,” Dave tried to sit up, but when his body exercised its right to revolt he went limp and squeezed his eyes shut. “I mean right now. The where, the what, the…” he waved a hand vaguely.

“Oh. Well you _finally_ picked up my call but it wasn’t actually you. It was some bouncer who was babysitting you but couldn’t see the baby gorilla charm in your passed out girth and wanted to pawn you off. So I came and picked you up and, uh, yeah. Takin’ you home now.”

John passed him a half-empty can of Red Bull which Dave guzzled down like an overenthusiastic kid with a sports drink. He lowered the can to his lap and let out a deep breath, flopping his head back against the seat. It had been a while since he’d been drunk and hungover at the same time. David cracked an eyelid to watch the buildings rush by, the gentle bumps of the road soothing his shot nerves. He picked up his thoughts when John's interpretation of a corner flung him into the console.

“So you were calling me? What, get your dick stuck in the peanut butter jar?”

“I’ll forgive you just this once for implying my dick could fit in any jar made by man but we’re going to have a long talk about it later. Not as long as my dick of course because we’d need a few more lifetimes to do that.” When Dave failed to complain about the dick joke, John glanced nervously at him. “So uh, you really don’t remember?”

He was starting to. Shadow people. Bathroom. Something important. _Gone_.

“Tell me.”

Uncharacteristically, John focused on the road.

“John, _tell me_.”

“I don’t know man, maybe we should wait ‘til we’re off the road. Or like, if you don’t remember just wait forever. Y’know what, that’s probably best. That sounds… that sounds good.”

“Don’t fuck with me about this, I know it’s important.”

John worried his lip. “Look, it’s not like I don’t _want_ to tell you, it’s just that the first time you got the news you went on a rampage and wrestled with a wrestler as if he actually knew how to wrestle which is a mistake only an alien or a literal embryo could make. By the way, you’re totally inviting me next time and our team name is ‘Well Hung’ and our gimmick is execution.”

Dave leveled a chilled stare at John. “John…”

“It’s just that I’m pretty close to your fists right n—”

“John!”

“Fine!” He threw his hands in the air then clamped them onto the wheel to swerve back into his lane. “But you cannot freak out on me.”

“That’s making me feel like I should freak out. But fine. Tell me already.”

John flicked his eyes over to Dave again. “Dude. Kidz Bop is dead.”

Dave freaked out.


	2. Expensive and High Maintenance

The last move had been hard. For starters, it was a full month ahead of schedule due to the whole vagina pond incident making everyone feel sad or uncomfortable above the Venus Flytrap. And being positive was David’s new job as assigned by Amy so that wasn’t an option. So he went apartment hunting, usually an easy task in a place as ugly and terrible as Undisclosed, but as Dave would soon find to be a pattern, it ended up being harder than it usually was. Everywhere he turned landlords would either say no outright or drag him along for a while before a mystery renter swept in and ganked the apartment. It was baffling and frustrating and Dave was having a difficult time doing his job.

Eventually he found a place and thus stepped up his packing game. This also proved difficult for a number of shitty, nonsense reasons that really no one wants to get into, unlike all of the shitty, nonsense reasons moving out was a nightmare. To begin with, the town was still largely flooded and preoccupied with becoming not flooded. All of the moving trucks and trailers were spoken for by people facing water damage and who had hopefully gotten the memo that Undisclosed wasn’t suitable for human life. This meant trips to the car, then trips in the car. Over. And over. And over. This meant two games of 'try not to release a demon spawn' per box, once when he was stuffing the potentially dangerous junk into the car and another when he was pulling it out without spilling the rest of the potentially dangerous junk. But he couldn’t feel bad for himself because his girlfriend was off working nights and paying their bills and his one job was to be happy.

For all of the annoyances that went into moving, nothing prepared Dave for the misery of being done. Before, his job had been to be happy, yes, but also to pack and move him and his girlfriend with minimal ‘help’ from John. But once he’d unpacked everything he wanted to unpack he had nothing to do. Nowhere was hiring except the construction crews that had swarmed the destroyed area and Dave didn’t have the self image to lie to himself that that was something he was cut out for. So his one job was to be happy. And he couldn’t do it. With nothing to do, nothing to distract from after struggling against the odds for weeks on end, the pointlessness of Dave’s life came crashing down on him and landed him back on the couch where he’d promised Amy he wouldn’t be because spending all day on the couch wasn’t ‘being happy.’

Then someone knocked on the door. A new neighbor whose name Dave didn’t remember but whose gift he’d find difficult to forget. She grinned widely, welcoming him with the misconception that he’d be staying long enough to make it worth meeting him at all and pushed a plant into his hands. It was an orchid, purple with veins of yellow and a patterned pot. It was stupid and garish and ugly and high maintenance and holy shit, a little bit expensive as Dave discovered in his research. Three ice cubes a week, a narrow temperature range, and requiring bright but indirect light to thrive. It would never survive in this shithole world with needs so delicate and specific, but Amy seemed to like it so he stuck it in the kitchen window.

He only noticed the plant again when he was leaned over the kitchen sink attacking tomato sauce on a shirt that was supposed to last him the rest of the week. The plant looked a little sad, and since Dave had nothing else to stare at as he dabbed at the sauce, he ran a bit of water into its pot and set it back on the sill. One of its buds bloomed the next day. Dave noticed it as he was scrubbing a tomato sauce stain out of his shirt and couldn’t stop himself from running a finger over the petal so gently he could barely feel how soft it was. It was gorgeous.

He bought an icecube tray and since the plant only needed three cubes a week he made the purchase more economically sound and made a grand romantic gesture out of it by popping a few cubes into Amy’s water bottle before she left for work. As the plant continued to bloom and David continued to look at it, it became obvious the kitchen window wasn’t suiting its needs. He walked around the apartment holding its pot, looking for a place with bright but indirect light. He didn’t find one, but found the bathroom window to be a good substitute if he just adjusted the blinds at sunset when light shone in directly and then again in the morning so the blinds weren’t blocking any sun. And so Dave found himself waking with the sunrise and watching a lot of sunsets. As he nudged the blinds to the precise angle to allow a few more hours of bright but indirect light, Dave would stare at the swathes of colored sky and sometimes take a walk to appreciate it better. He described the best ones to Amy.

Dave didn’t realize how whipped he had become to the plant until John was over to watch TV. As the sun lowered Dave would scamper off to the bathroom and infinitesimally adjust the blinds so the plant was still getting light but not having it beamed on directly. John finally followed to see what he was doing after the third time and found Dave staring at the sunset, something he had never seen his friend do. They went outside and watched it together.

“Dave. I have a serious question.”

“That sounds weird coming out of your mouth.”

“Are you being mind controlled by that plant? Blink twice if you are and three times if it made you touch it in inappropriate places.”

He blinked four times.

“Oh my god, it’s worse than I thought! It’s okay man, as long as I’m around I won’t let the scary plant force you to watch beautiful sunsets or think happy thoughts.”

“Is that what four blinks means?”

“That or it’s right behind me.” As he said it, John chopped an arm behind him.

Dave swirled his beer around. “Is it dumb that I’m watching sunsets because of a plant? And while I’m at it I may as well confess that I’ve been watching sunrises too. Oh, and putting ice in Amy’s water and taking walks.”

“It’s pretty corny but I don’t know if it’s dumb. Honestly it might even be… healthy? Like having the plant is giving you a legitimate reason to do all that stuff other than the abstract of ‘being happy.’”

Dave took a sip.

“So what’s its name?”

David shrugged.

“Unacceptable. We’re brainstorming one right now and you’re legally required to consider my suggestions.”

John couldn’t help himself from whipping his head over when David laughed. “Okay man, what’ve you got for me.”

John tapped his chin. “I’m kind of getting Y2K vibes from its colors and that pattern on its pot,” he said. “So like… what about Orbeez.”

Dave actually looked like he was considering it. “I see where you’re coming from, but that’s a shit name. What do you think about Shamwow?”

“You’re not naming your plant after a rag,” John laughed. “Oh oh, I’ve got a good one— Inexplicably Low Waisted, Boot Cut Jeans.”

“Jesus Christ, what could anything ever do _ever_ to deserve that name.”

They tossed names back and forth, some serious, most not until the sky was purple and insects were flocking to the apartment complex’s exterior lights.

“Okay, fuck off with the shitty fashion trends! And how do you even know all these?”

John shrugged, smiled. “Lotta girlfriends, lotta clothes. Speaking of—”

“— no—”

“— how about—”

“— NO—”

“— Fedora n’ Capris.”

Dave was silent. ‘Fedora n’ Capris’ echoed into the night and was absorbed by the universe. “That’s it, we’re going with Kidz Bop.”

“Boooo.”

“I’m not sorry, but you clearly can’t be trusted with this responsibility. Or anything really, why did I let you help?”

“Well you should’ve known that from the start so there’s no need to name your happiness mind-control plant ‘Kidz Bop.’”

“There really is.”

They wandered back inside, John subtly trying to influence David to use one of his names by directly suggesting he use one of his names. They ate pizza bagels and laughed and speculated on the tone of Kidz Bop #69. When Amy got back in the wee hours of the morning and tried to sneak into bed, David smothered her with kisses before holding her close.

* * *

“Of course. Of _fucking_ course! Why didn’t you take that thing away from me when you saw how happy it made me? We could’ve avoided alllll this if I had an ounce of foresight in my fat fucking carcass and realized I’m not allowed to be happy. Fuck!” Dave punched the glovebox.

John still looked a healthy amount of concerned but had been at it so long it was beginning to turn to exasperation. “I know you’re upset and like, I get it, but what did you expect to happen if you never watered it?”

“… what.”

“You bought that icecube tray, but you never used it. And you left the blinds in the bathroom closed so it never got any light, it’s honestly a miracle it lived as long as it did.”

David’s stare was cold. “John, I took care of Kidz Bop like it was a newborn _fucking_ child.”

Or did he. Even as Dave was focusing on all the times he’d popped out icecubes for the plant or for Amy, all the sunsets he’d watched and blinds he’d adjusted, they were fading. The memories were turning to smoke in his hands, replaced with wilting petals and cracked soil. Maybe he _hadn’t_ taken as good care of that plant as he thought, it could be true that he was just a shit plant-dad who couldn’t do anything right and deserved to—

“FUCK!” His head rattled from the outburst. He spoke just above a whisper, “It’s Them trying to make me think I did this. They probably erased every time I watered Kidz Bop and adjusted the blinds for him— which I did. A lot. I know it.”

John nodded, made a ‘that makes sense’ noise. “That’s too bad, but,” he shrugged, “what’s it matter?”

“Only that Kidz Bop was the only thing making me happy,” he sighed. “I’m back to square one now except now I know that if I go out to square two or three they’ll be pulled out from under me and used to beat me over the head.”

“That’s not necessarily true, you started some good habits that you don’t _need_ the plant to keep going with.”

David wasn’t listening. “… Did I go to a church?”

“It’s Friday. Or uh, Saturday I guess. Oh wait. Oooh, you mean… yeah, I have no idea. Hey if you’re gonna throw up could you aim for the stain?”

“I’ll consider it.”

They lapsed into silence, David staring out the window.

“John.”

“Mm?”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere for you to work out your feelings with violence. We’re going to Deer Foot Lane.” John said it as if they were in a movie and the screen would fade black before re-opening on a shot of the two of them standing in front of something cool. Instead they continued to bounce around in an awkward silence and a car that smelled subtly of shrimp.

“Is that like… where They live?”

John shook his head. “It’s sort of a portal thingy but weird. Do you remember anything I was telling you when you were passed out?”

“I want you to say that sentence to yourself again, but slowly.”

“Shit.” John frowned. “I know you don’t like hearing about weird stuff so I was telling you about Deer Foot Lane when you were out. Hoped you might have absorbed some of what I’d told you.”

“Has that ever happened to you?”

“Well, I don’t remember learning Mandarin, but I can say ‘Eat a duck dick,’ and I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“If you don’t know Mandarin how do you know that’s what you’re saying?”

“Do you ever just get a really strong feeling about something?”

“Fair enough.” David fought into an upright position. “So, Deer Foot Lane?”

“Deer Foot Lane! It’s like a portal in a fake street that takes you to this other dimension with these… these things,” he opened and closed his fist as if to clarify, “and it’s really satisfying to crush them.”

“I don’t know,” Dave sighed. Already, his anger at the shadow people was turning inward, their subtle changes spinning a subtext of blame and negligence. “Maybe we should just go back to my place, have a few beers, and try to forget I ever cared about that plant.”

“No way, you clearly need to let this all out with some violence. Besides! We’re already here.” 

Sure enough, John was throwing the car into park at the corner of Deer Foot Lane, a street Dave couldn’t remember seeing before. He hopped out and waited for David to slough out of the seat and stand beside him.

“All you need to do is step past the curb.” John pushed David past the curb.

He stumbled and before he could get his bearings after a total change in dimension had to keep himself from tripping over a bulbous something growing out of the ground. He nudged it with his foot. It quivered, something inside its taut membrane sloshing.

“It’s a pimple,” he muttered.

“Right? But check this out.” John walked farther into a landscape barren except for these pustules jutting up from the ground as far as the eye could see. He put his foot over one the size of cantaloupe, which looked to be about average, and pressed.

SQUE— POP

“Oh Jesus.”

Puss the consistency of spoiled milk oozed out of an inflamed hole where the pimple had just been. The immediate surroundings glistened with fluid and the smell of bad vagina wafted David’s way.

John gestured to Dave. “You’ve gotta try it man, it’s orgasmic.”

Grimacing, Dave put his foot over a small one. He pumped it experimentally and watched it quiver. Then he pressed.

SQUEEE-POP

It was like bubble wrap and pistachios had combined to make the world’s most addictive sensation. Dave moved on and squashed another without playing with it.

SQUE-POP

“Fun, right?”

SQUE-POP

“Yeah man, go for it.”

SQUE-POP-POP

“Fuck it up!”

John cheered David on for a while longer before getting bored and setting out in the opposite direction as Dave to pop some bulbs of his own. With every one David destroyed it was like scratching an itch he hadn’t known he’d had or popping a joint satisfyingly and unexpectedly. In all likelihood, a dimension of melon-sized pustules wasn’t vital to the shadow people, but he could rain vengeant fury upon them anyways. It was payback for what they had taken and vengeance for their fascination with making Dave’s life as miserable as possible. As he dwelled on that thought, his popping slowed. He was lashing out at the world like a two year old who hadn’t gotten his snack. After this, after he went home where Kidz Bop was dead and his girlfriend wasn’t because she was _working_ for _money_ , nothing would have changed. He pressed a bulb with his foot, forcing the fluid to strain against the thin membrane, begging to be released.

SQUEE

He let up, wandered back along his path of destruction then along John’s.

“I think I’m done.”

John looked up from where he’d just demolished one by leaping on it with both feet. “Got your fix?”

Dave shrugged. “I’m just not feeling it. I wanna go home.”

“You wanna go home or you wanna go sit on your couch?” John crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow accusingly.

“Fucking— yeah, maybe I do. Because the couch isn’t going to be ripped out from under me and what the fuck else do I have to do. It’s not like I can work towards anything or do _anything_ that would make me happy because that’s just not allowed for me, nope, not for David.” John looked taken aback at the outburst. Dave sighed and looked away. “Sorry for yelling at you. Look, it’s just… I… I saw Gary yesterday on my walk. From high school. He has a kid.”

John’s face melted into pity as he started to say something. Dave hated it.

“No, no, no, I know what you’re thinking and before you think it, you need to remember who you’re talking to. Kids are smelly and loud and high maintenance and expensive, and in no reality would I want to bring one into this world let alone raise one. The problem is that that’s not even an option for me. I know that if Amy and I had a kid it would live just long enough for me to get attached and then,” Dave whistled and drew a line across his throat. “And I’d probably be left with planted memories of sexually abusing it or beating it or whatever the shadow people thought was funny. My life is so fucked,” David laughed humorlessly. “People say the universe works against them, but for me that’s literally true. The universe doesn’t want me to be happy and I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with that. My one job is to be happy and I can’t.”

He kicked a pimple to punctuate the point.

John chose his words carefully. “But what about me and Amy? You have us and our movie nights and all the stuff we do together. You said it yourself, you don’t want a kid so why be bothered about it?”

“It was just an examp—”

“Just an example, yeah, sure. But the point is that you think you can’t care about anything and it’s just not true. Even if Kidz Bop is dead that doesn’t stop you from going on walks or putting ice in Amy’s water or watching a sunset. You got something out of caring for that plant the shadow people can’t take away. I know you want to think your flower dying means you have to be depressed, but… it really doesn’t. I know it’s hard, but me and Amy want to help and you have to let us and you can’t roll over and take this. I won’t let you. What you’re gonna do is take all the positive habits you got out of taking care of Kidz Bop and shove it up a shadow’s asshole!”

“I don’t know if it’s that easy,” David sighed.

“It’s not,” John said. “But I’m helping you anyways.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wrestling in the first chapter is based off Party World Rasslin', my local underground wrestling scene which I miss dearly in these 2020 times. Horse guy is Bench Horse, the chef is Luigi Primo, and skull face is Timmy Quivers. It is very important to me that you know this.
> 
> Kidz Bop is also real. Not the kids singing group, of course.


End file.
